Human Rights Watch Urges IMF to Withhold Loan Payment to Angola

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- The International Monetary Fund
should withhold a final loan payment of $130 million to Angola
because of a “discrepancy” in income from oil sales, Human
Rights Watch said.

The IMF is doing the final review on the southern African
nation’s $1.4 billion loan agreed to in 2009, the New York-based
group said yesterday in a statement. The government must account
for $32 billion missing from state accounts between 2007 and
2010, it said.

“Angolan authorities need to fully and publicly explain
what they did with those billions in taxpayer funds before
getting another cent from the IMF,” Human Rights Watch said.

The discrepancies in accounting were because of
“insufficient annotation” of oil revenues that weren’t
transferred directly to the government by Sonangol EP, the state
oil company, according to the government. Angola is Africa’s
second-biggest oil producer.